GOP Economic Policy Caused Social Security's Problems

Social Security is one of the most successful programs the government has created. It lifted millions of seniors out of abject poverty. For that reason, it is also one of the most popular programs.

But the Republicans have never liked Social Security. They voted against its establishment, and have continued to vote against it. They tried to replace it with a program that would put seniors at the mercy of rich interests in the stock market during the Bush II administration, and when that didn't work, they continue efforts to cut the program.

Republicans claim that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme that will continually require more funds until it can no longer be sustained. They point to the coming Social Security funding problem as proof. It is true that Social Security will need more funding in the near future or will be able to pay only about 80% of benefits. But that doesn't make it a "Ponzi scheme". It's a result of bad economic policy that the Republicans instituted.

In 1983, the retirement age was raised to 67, and new a new Social Security tax cutoff was instituted. With these moves, Social Security trustees estimated that would be sufficient to fund the program far into the future.

At the time, economic policy had rising productivity being shared among all groups in our society. That rising productivity for workers would mean that funding for Social Security would also rise and pay for the growing number of retirees.

But something happened to change that. The Republicans gained enough power to change the nation's economic policy. They instituted a trickle-down economic policy (telling Americans that giving more to the rich would benefit everyone). But the new policy allowed the rich to hog almost all of the rising productivity. That meant the rich got a huge increase in income and wealth, while workers were no longer sharing in the rising productivity.

Since worker wages were not rising as expected (because nothing was trickling down), the Social Security funding was also not rising. This caused the funding problem Social Security will soon see. In other words, the Republicans caused the problem with Social Security with their failed economic policy favoring the rich (at the detriment of everyone else).

Now they want to further cut Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age to 70. They claim it would not hurt Americans because of the rising life expectancy. That's disingenuous. While life expectancy has risen for many, it has not risen for those who must do physical labor all their working lives. Raising the retirement age will mean they will not receive the retirement benefit that worked and paid for all their lives. Once again, the Republicans favor the rich over the working men and women.

There are some cures for Social Security funding that would be much better than denying the benefit to workers. Here is what we need to do:

* Raise the cap on Social Security taxes. The current cap is about $168,000. Raise that to about $250,000 (or eliminate it altogether). This would have no effect on the amount paid by workers, but it would make the rich pay more.

* Raise the minimum wage to a livable wage. This would increase the Social Security funding since workers would be making more.

* Change our economic policy (which can only be done by voting the GOP out of power). Re-institute a policy like we had before where all segments of society share in rising productivity, instead of letting the rich hog all of it.

* Another thing that should be done (which the GOP opposes) is to pass a new and fair immigration policy. The U.S. needs foreign workers - not only to fill the jobs that Americans don't want, but also to pay Social Security (and other) taxes.

There are solutions to the economic disaster created by the Republicans for our economy and Social Security. But they can't happen until the Republicans are voted out of power (because they cling to their failed policy that helps only the rich).